Hush

by Sara Marshall-Ball

  She heard a rustling near the neighbour’s fence, and turned; she could see a shape through the gaps in the wood. ‘Hello?’ she called. A face appeared over the top, a young woman she had never seen before.

  ‘Hi. Are you one of Anna’s daughters?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m Connie.’ She moved closer, so they wouldn’t have to shout. ‘Where is she, do you know?’

  ‘She was taken into hospital last night.’ The woman leaned her elbows on the fence. She was head and shoulders above Connie; she must have been standing on something that Connie couldn’t see. ‘I’m Lucy, by the way.’

  ‘Hi.’ Connie frowned. ‘Hospital?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yeah. The place – it’s just in the next village. The psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sifted through the possible responses for one that might seem appropriate. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Not sure. I’ve not lived here long, but her boyfriend popped by, to let us know what was going on.’ Connie flinched at the mention of Ed, but didn’t comment. ‘I think she had some kind of breakdown,’ Lucy added, her words measured, as if she was checking their impact as she said them.

  ‘Right. Makes sense.’ Connie nodded. ‘I should go and check on her, then.’ She went inside without another word, though she could feel Lucy’s eyes on her all the way up the path.

  She remembered the name of the hospital; it had been notorious, back when she was at school, and Eleanor had tormented her with the possibility that she would be sent there. She wanted to get a taxi, but she didn’t have enough money for that, so she locked up the house behind her and walked down to the bus stop.

  The buses ran in that direction every twelve minutes, so she didn’t have long to wait. The journey took about half an hour. She spent the time trying not to think about the state she’d find her mother in. She’d seemed odd, before, but Connie had put that down to having to tell her that Dad was dead. Had she had a breakdown? Or was it just normal grief?

  The nurses asked her to wait when she arrived at the hospital. They called a doctor, who introduced herself as Dr Ruskin, and took her into a private office. ‘Are your grandparents not with you?’ she asked as they sat down. ‘We spoke to them this morning.’

  ‘No, it’s just me.’ Connie didn’t offer any further information, and Dr Ruskin looked for a moment as if she was going to ask, then seemed to think better of it. She gave Connie an overview of Anna’s situation, then sat back and looked her in the eye.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ she said, ‘she’s much better than she was when she arrived, but it’s unlikely she’s going to be well enough to live on her own again, for a while at least. She’s severely depressed, but we also think she may be suffering from schizophrenia. She’s certainly not capable of looking after herself right now.’

  ‘Do I need to look after her?’

  The doctor looked surprised at the bluntness of the question. ‘No. You’re a minor, so we’re not expecting you to take responsibility for her. But we think she’ll probably have to be moved into a long-term care unit.’

  ‘And who would pay for that?’

  ‘A lot of it would be covered under the NHS. But your father also had a life insurance policy, so she has money available. It’s unlikely she’d have to sell her house.’

  ‘Unlikely.’ Connie said the word aloud, digesting it.

  ‘We’ll have your interests in mind as well as hers. It’s something that will be discussed with you as time goes on. At the moment we would only be looking to move her into a care unit for an initial period of six months.’

  Connie nodded. ‘And when are you looking to do this?’

  ‘Actually, the move is already planned for next week. She’s agreed to it.’

  After that Dr Ruskin took her to see her mother. ‘Visitor for you,’ she said, opening the door without knocking and gesturing Connie inside. She closed the door behind her, leaving them alone.

  The room was bright and sunny, the window looking down on green, rolling lawns. Anna was propped up in bed, eyes on the TV in the corner of the room. She glanced up as Connie entered, but only seemed half-aware of her presence.

  ‘Hi,’ Connie said, feeling awkward. She sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Anna’s voice was drowsy, but she sounded coherent.

  ‘The neighbour told me where you were.’

  ‘Ah. Good.’

  ‘What’s going on, Mama?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Same old, same old.’ Her eyes slid back towards the TV, as if the conversation were now over.

  ‘You’ve been living with Ed,’ Connie persisted.

  ‘I didn’t have anyone else.’

  There was no apology, no remorse, and Connie felt her fingers tense around the duvet that encased her mother. She wanted to dig her fingernails into her mother’s flesh.

  ‘How could you do it, though?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice low and reasonable. ‘After everything that’s happened. Dad’s dead, and still you just carry on, having the same affair you always had.’

  ‘Well, there was no point in hiding it any more, was there?’ Anna laughed bitterly. ‘Your logic seems somewhat skewed, my dear.’

  ‘Didn’t you feel guilty?’

  Anna closed her eyes. There was a long pause, and for a minute Connie thought she had fallen asleep. But then she opened them again, wearily. ‘Of course I felt guilty. But I was also angry with your father.’

  ‘He tried his best.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘When? I saw you the night Billy died. And I saw you the night Lily got shut in the cupboard. Did it ever stop? Or were you with him the whole time, all that time Dad was trying to hold our family together?’

  ‘We stopped for a while.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Anna sighed. ‘No, I didn’t think you would. I doubt you’d believe me if I told you your father wasn’t a saint, and he didn’t always treat me that well, and Ed made me feel a lot of things that he never did. But it’s true. And now it makes no difference, because your father’s dead and I’m in here and Ed isn’t able to look after me, so none of it matters any more.’

  ‘It matters to me.’

  ‘You’ll grow out of it.’ Anna shifted on the bed until she was lying down. ‘I need to sleep now.’

  ‘They’re talking about keeping you in hospital for months. Is this it? Are you just going to lie here and let this be your life?’

  ‘It’s not a choice that’s mine to make.’

  ‘It is, Mama. All of this has been your choice. You could have chosen to make it work, chosen to try –’

  ‘And then have it all turn out like this anyway.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I know more than you do. Please let me sleep now.’

  Connie sat there in silence, until her mother’s light snoring filled the room, and then she left. It was a long time before she saw her again.

  now

  Lily could feel the reverberations of Connie’s words as if they were ripples in the air around her. There was a sense of something suddenly falling into place, but that place was obscured, shrouded in darkness.

  ‘An affair?’ she repeated, but they didn’t hear her.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Richard was saying. He was looking back and forth between Ed and Connie, as if not sure which one of them he should be demanding answers from. He turned on Ed. ‘You knew who I was when you first approached me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ed looked as if he was going to say more, but stopped.

  ‘And your reason for approaching me was… What, exactly?’

  Ed shrugged. His eyes were fixed on Lily. ‘You look so like her,’ he said wistfully. ‘Like your mother.’

  Lily looked at him more closely, tuning out the conversation around her. His face was only faintly familiar, a blur of features she remembered from childhood mixed with shadows from the recent past. ‘You’re Billy’s dad,’ she said abruptly.

&n
bsp; ‘Yes, of course.’ His voice was pained.

  ‘And it was you that I saw in the garden when I collapsed.’

  That got Richard’s attention. ‘What the hell? What are you talking about?’

  Ed tensed and took a step back, but Lily ignored them both, turning to Connie.

  ‘An affair?’ she said.

  Connie looked pale in the moonlight, shadows making odd hollows in her face, so that Lily couldn’t read her expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘Surely the point is that you should have said something?’ Lily felt confused, wrong-footed. She couldn’t quite understand what was happening. ‘When were they having an affair? Why did you know about it when I didn’t?’

  Connie looked at the ground. ‘I didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I was trying to protect you –’

  ‘Protect me from what?’

  Lily’s voice rose to a pitch it hadn’t reached for years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that feeling: the tightness in her throat, the straining of her vocal cords, and the release that came with the vibrations of sound.

  She felt Richard grasping at her hand, striving to calm her, but she shook him off. Eyes firmly fixed on her sister, who refused to meet her gaze. And Connie’s voice, when it came, so small it was almost lost in the darkness.

  ‘I was only trying to help.’

  Figures emerging from the dark, clawing at their own clothes, reassembling themselves as they slipped out of the shadows. Two figures splayed out on the floor, two standing in the trees: and Lily crouched between, listening to her sister’s quiet sobs.

  Billy face-first in the dirt, neck twisted, unnatural. Dark pool underneath his head. Arms spreadeagled: no life in dead hands. And the voices of the tree-shadows reached her, slow in their approach, as if swimming through treacle.

  – What’s going on why are you crying that’s my son –

  And then Mama’s arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground: legs suspended briefly in mid-air, flying. Same for Connie: both of them standing side by side in the darkness, moon flitting through trees, and Mama hurrying them back to the house, a muttered stream of desperate words receding behind them.

  – He saw us he saw us he saw us –

  Billy left in the dirt with his father: and, later, the distant whine of sirens, heard from the safety of her bed.

  ‘He saw them,’ Lily said, her voice slow, as the pieces of the puzzle pushed themselves together. ‘Billy saw them together. That’s why he fell?’

  Connie hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘And you knew? You knew what happened and you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I – it’s difficult, Lils. They sent you away – and you were only eight, you wouldn’t have understood – I didn’t understand myself, not then. I saw him running away from something, and I saw him fall, but it wasn’t until later that I put it together, realised what he’d seen.’ She swallowed. ‘What I’d seen.’

  ‘But you didn’t say anything.’ Lily’s voice, hard, stubborn. ‘You could have told me, when you realised, but you never did.’

  ‘I told you it wasn’t our fault, when I got back. I thought that was what mattered. How could it have helped, to know the rest? You weren’t even living with Mama any more; you had nothing to do with her…’

  Lily waved a hand, brushing her protestations off. ‘When did you put it together?’

  ‘I saw them together. Just before I ran away.’

  Lily was dimly aware of Richard and Ed behind her, listening avidly; of the lurking backdrop of the trees, and of the darkness stretching out for miles beyond them. But her attention was focused on Connie, and on trying to piece together the implications of what she was saying. The subtle shift of all the things she’d thought she’d known, merging into the pieces that had always been missing.

  ‘How long did it go on?’

  ‘Forever.’ Connie was close to tears now, her voice trembling. ‘It never stopped, did it?’

  She looked up at Ed for confirmation, but his head was bowed and Lily wasn’t interested in his response. ‘Did Dad know?’

  ‘I don’t know. We never talked about it.’

  ‘But that’s why they fought all the time, yes?’

  Lily was shaking now. She felt Richard’s hands on her shoulders, steadying her. Tried to keep her breathing even, but the realisations were coming too fast, the pieces connecting with a solidity that choked the air in her throat.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ she said, when Connie didn’t reply. ‘They fought because Mama was having an affair. Billy died because he saw them. And Dad – ’ Her voice caught, but she shook her head, forcing the words out. ‘Dad died because they fought about it. He was miserable, and then he died, all because of this. And you never told me.’

  ‘Please, Lils, please don’t turn this on me. It’s him, he’s the one in the wrong – ’ Connie waved a hand in Ed’s direction, but Lily shook her head again.

  ‘No. He was just a stupid man having an affair. You’re the one who lied to me.’

  ‘But I was trying to keep you safe. You were never okay, never strong enough…’

  ‘And why do you think that was?’ Lily’s voice rose to a shout, and she felt the stretching in her vocal cords: the feeling of shouting after so many years, of releasing noise after years of encasing herself in silence, was like stepping back into the skin of a person she used to be. ‘I knew there was something missing. Something I needed to remember. You must have known as well, surely? You can’t have been that wrapped up in yourself, that you never realised?’

  She saw Connie take a step back, cowering from the sound of a voice she barely remembered. ‘But you never said what the matter was, Lily, not really. I thought – I thought it was just because of everything.’ Her voice was raw now, her lips trembling. ‘I thought it would be easier for everyone if we just tried to forget about it.’

  ‘But you never asked. You just assumed. Made my choices for me, as always.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lils, it wasn’t just about you, okay? I was there too. Billy was my friend. What makes you think it would have been so easy for me to talk about it?’

  For a moment Lily stood glowering, torn, wanting to say more; then, without another word, she turned and walked back to the house. She heard the three of them behind her: Richard questioning Connie, Connie demanding answers from Ed, Ed protesting his innocence. The voices merged together, three separate strands of outrage and confusion blending together as one.

  She closed the door on them, and released herself into the silence of the house.

  She must have fallen asleep. She awoke on the sofa, with Richard sat at her feet like an oversized guard dog. At some point he’d draped a blanket over her, placed a glass of water on the table next to her head. His hand was absent-mindedly holding on to one of her calves, though he was staring in the opposite direction and his mind was clearly elsewhere.

  ‘Morning,’ she whispered, and he whipped his head round. ‘Is everyone else gone?’

  ‘Yeah. Connie said she’s going to come over later, if you don’t mind. She wants to talk to you properly, once the shock’s passed a bit.’

  Lily nodded. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to talk about it yet: didn’t want to shelve her feelings, bestow forgiveness, as she knew she would have to do if they were going to move on.

  But then, if it was a choice between that and no forgiveness, she would do what needed to be done. A future without Connie was unthinkable, barely a future at all.

  ‘What about Ed?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘Did he explain what he was doing here?’

  ‘Sort of. He said he’s been coming over for a while, trying to get the garden nice for you. Said he used to do it when your mother lived here and he found it hard to break the habit. He kept talking about your hair and your eyes, how you looked like her – you and
Connie, but especially you.

  Lily nodded. ‘People have said that before.’

  ‘Well, I think he was hanging around trying to get a glimpse of you. Seems a bit obsessed, if you ask me, but I think he’s harmless enough.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. He was always a bit weird, after his wife left him. And after Billy died…’ She closed her eyes, trying to remember. ‘I know there were rumours, about him going crazy, prowling around the woods at night looking for Billy’s ghost.’

  ‘When actually he was probably just looking for your mother.’

  ‘Guess so.’ Lily stretched and pushed herself upright. ‘I think I need a shower.’

  ‘Want me to make some coffee?’

  ‘Sounds great. Thanks.’

  She showered slowly, watching the water pool briefly at her feet before swirling away down the plughole. She felt as though the shift in her perspective had stretched outwards from the mere fact of past events, touching everything. She tried to pinpoint the change: it wasn’t just the clarity of knowing more than she had done before.

  It took almost a minute for her to realise that she was no longer afraid.

  When she went back downstairs Richard was sitting at the table sifting through the post, a pot of coffee in front of him. He poured her a cup, wordlessly, and she sat down opposite him and lifted the cup to her face without drinking. Thick tendrils of scent wound their way through the air and into her senses. The doors in front of her, demanding her attention.

  ‘I want to go outside,’ she said.

  Richard grabbed their coats and they stepped outside into the freezing morning air, their coffee forgotten on the table inside. Lily walked steadily down the garden, feeling the gentle slope of the lawn beneath her. Richard was half a step behind – with her, but letting her lead.

  A path of paving stones led through the lavender borders. Last time Lily walked this path the stones had been like slabs, the lavender level with her head: it had been like plunging through a gateway into another world. Now it was just a path, just a few plants; and, ahead, the looming darkness of the trees: just trees.